Reading Recap: March 2025
I got caught up with Confucius. Now, back to the Greek Tragedies!
I set aside one post per month to highlight my reading life. Books of Titans is a reading project aimed at seeking the ancient paths by reading The Immortal Books by 200 authors chronologically over the next 15 years. Thank you for following my journey.
March Reading Recap
Want to hear something funny? I thought I’d be able to read The Analects of Confucius over the period of a few days. My plan was to start on March 1st and get back into the Greek Tragedies by March 4th.
Well, let’s just say I got caught up with Confucius. I was fascinated. My planned 3 days turned into an entire month. I started with the Arthur Waley translation of The Analects and wanted to know more, so I bought a second translation by Annping Chin. I was curious to see how different translators would render ideas like benevolence, gentlemen, and rites.
In the notes to Annping Chin’s translation, I kept seeing her book The Authentic Confucius mentioned and it piqued my interest. I wanted to learn more about Confucius so I got that book as well.
And then, I kept seeing Confucius reference songs and odes from a collection called The Book of Songs. I had never heard of such a thing from China, so I read around 100 pages of ancient song lyrics as well. I finally had to put a stop to this madness before Chinese literature took over the entire year!
It was all great fun. I’ve had a deep interest in Chinese history since a trip I took to Beijing and Chengdu in 2000. This past month sparked that interest again. I also had an epiphany while reading one of the statements of Confucius. I wrote about that here:
And here are two podcast episodes I recorded this past month about my encounter with Confucius:
April Reading Plan - Euripides
April will be the month of Euripides. In the photo above, the books standing up on the left are those I read last year. I’m picking back up where I left off with Euripides going from bottom to top from the pile on the right. It looks like a lot, but I only have 9 plays remaining. I just had to buy a bunch of books to get them all. Here’s the list:
Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, Rhesus
Suppliants, Phoenician Women
Ion, Helen, Orestes
Hippolytus Temporizes
The two green books on the top contain surviving fragments of Euripidies’ non-extant tragedy plays. He wrote around 90 and 19 survive, so this will provide details and snippets of those we don’t have. This stuff gets me so excited. I’ve really gotten into fragments as part of this reading project.
And the Greek Tragedies in general have been some of my favorite reading I’ve ever done. I started reading Phoenician Women this morning and was absolutely having the time of my life.
I’m toying with the idea of leaving one play unread because I simply can’t bear the thought of there not being another Greek Tragedy to read.
April Reading Group Book - The Great Gatsby
Online: Wednesday, April 16 | 2pm Central Time
I lead a monthly reading group called Short Great Books. I try to pick books that will take you between 2-5 hours to read. We meet in-person at Landmark Booksellers on the 2nd Monday of each month and online on the following Wednesday. The book for April is The Great Gatsby. I’d love for you to join. They are delightful conversations. If you’re like me, you read The Great Gatsby in high school. I hated it when I read it then. I revisited it a few years ago and absolutely loved it. I think it’s a book that requires life experience to understand.
To join online, just become a paid subscriber here for as little as $5/month, and I’ll send you the Zoom call details:
Other Reading
I try really hard to stick to my reading plan, but as you’ve seen in this newsletter, things happen. I’m the business manager at Landmark Booksellers and in that role, I book all of our author events. So, between upcoming author events, potential author events, and other books, I’m going to try to somehow fit these in over the next few months. I will skim most of these:
There’s Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift by Kevin Evers
The Odyssey Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn (yes, he may be coming to Landmark this year, which would be incredible)
A new book by Joel J. Miller that I’ve started and think is just incredible
Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media by Jacob Mchangama (another author event we have coming up).
Pslams - I’m currently in a Catherine Project reading group covering the Book of Psalms, so I’ll be reading a certain number of Psalms each week in preparation.
March Bookish Adventures
My wife, daughters, and I took a trip to Charleston for Spring Break this past month. On the way there, we stopped at The Book Tavern in Augusta, GA. It was a great bookstore and I purchased quite a few books. They had a selection of rare books behind the counter. I asked to go behind the counter to look and was flatly rejected. I thought I might have better luck with another of the booksellers, but was rejected for a second time. Mind you, this is after showing a large stack of books I intended to purchase and talking shop about what it’s like in the book business.
I couldn’t see the titles of the books from where I was standing and so they handed me a pair of binoculars from the old days that may have had 1.5x magnification on a clear day in perfect conditions. It didn’t help across the 3 feet of distance, so my wife caught this photo of me squinting, trying to see what books I may have purchased had they simply let me behind the counter. Oh well.
I visited a number of bookstores in Charleston as well. My biggest joy is coming across a book I didn’t know existed. It sparks the mind in a way few things do. It offers a window into another world that can only be accessed by opening the pages. It’s an intoxicating feeling that simply never ends. It’s not possible to come to the end of a narrow topic much less the sum of human knowledge in a lifetime. That curiosity is the gift that keeps on giving (if to nowhere else, at least to my credit card).
Music & Books
This past month, I wrote an article about reading with music. I thought I’d begin highlighting the music I pair each month with the books I’m reading as maybe you’ll want to try the same music. Since March consisted of Chinese works, I listened to the following albums over and over again:
Chinese Traditional Music - https://music.apple.com/us/album/chinese-traditional-music/62055363
The Last Emperor Soundtrack - https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-last-emperor-original-soundtrack/714659119
Ancient Chinese Music - https://music.apple.com/us/album/ancient-chinese-music/1604416200
Traditional Chinese Music - https://music.apple.com/us/album/traditional-chinese-music-%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E4%BC%A0%E7%BB%9F%E9%9F%B3%E4%B9%90-%E5%A4%A9%E7%B1%81%E4%B9%8B%E9%9F%B3/1587147823
I'm confused. How does The Book Tavern expect to sell those rare (and probably expensive) books if they don't even let prospective buyers see the titles, much less examine the condition of the books themselves?